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A Story (My first try)



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haseo47

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Chapter 1
The Sun made its way through a split in the curtains, bringing light to the bedroom shrouded in darkness. A young man at the age of seventeen, lay sleeping peacefully, only to be woken up by the little glimmer of light.
“Xander, time to wake up! You don’t want to miss your last day of school do ya?” Yelled the boys’ mother. He pulled the covers over his head, and tried to continue sleeping, but his mom kept yelling. He didn’t bother to open the curtains any wider, and just got dressed.
Xander walked down the stairs that led to the kitchen. He rubbed his eyes and let out a yawn; his mother turned off the sink and dried her hands “Ah, so he lives!” She laughed at herself “You better get a move on before you’re late.” She grabbed his bag off the chair and tossed it to him, “Don’t forget that right after school you have training” Everyday she reminds him, even though he’s been going for ten years already. She kissed him on the forehead and said goodbye.
As Xander walked toward the door he looked in the living room, always hoping that his dad’s death was a nightmare, but it wasn’t, it really happened. He and his father were so close, they did everything together. It’s been three years, but it’s still so hard to get over. Xander opened the door, he heard his brother and sister come running toward him and he quickly moved out of the way.
His brother, Max, who was only one year younger then him, and his sister, Jessica, who was the youngest at fourteen. He being the oldest always has to watch after them, he never has time to do anything he wants to. They are old enough, but his parents still make him watch them.
They walked to the bus stop and waited for the bus to come and pick them up. “Xander, aren’t you excited!?!?!” Jessica tugged on his arm, and he just pulled his arm away and ignored her “Jessica, you’re so immature!” she shoved Max “No I’m not!”. They fight over the stupidest things, and this is one of them.
The bus finally pulled up and the three got on. The bus was near empty, most kids just skip the last day. He made his way to the back and sat down by himself. He leaned his head against the window and stared out at the trees and houses as they went by. He looked in the seat that was next to him, and saw a girl sitting there. She had just come to their school about a month ago. She was staring at him, but he just ignored her and continued to look out the window.
The bus stopped again at someone’s house. A girl got on the bus and sat down next to him and leaned up against him “Hey baby, something wrong?” He just shook his head “Don’t worry, it’s the last day of school, we haven’t spent any time together, but we are gonna during summer right?” He just shook his head yes. She moved off him and began talking to someone in front of them.
The bus suddenly stopped and everyone jerked forward into the seat. Some kid yelled cuz he wacked his head off the window due to that. Everyone stood up to see what was wrong, but there wasn’t anything. All the kids groaned and some kid yelled “Hurry up; I want to get to school to get it over with!”
They finally made it to school; lots of kids were crowded outside, all making their way into the school. The bus doors opened and everyone jumped out of their seats to hurry and get off. Xander though, just got up and made his way, not rushing to get off. He made his way to his locker and shoved his bag in and grabbed his books for Math class. As he closed his locker, his best friend Terry came up and smacked him on the back, “YO DUDE, YOU EXCITED THAT TODAYS THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL FOR GOOD!??!!?” Xander dropped his books when he got hit and just picked them up and didn’t say a word “Hey man, what’s wrong? Why have you been like this the past two weeks? C’mon you can tell me.” Xander began walking towards the Math room “It’s…nothing….don’t worry about it.” Terry stopped in his tracks and just stood there watching Xander walk away “O-ok man…whatever, see ya during lunch! Oh ya, also sit next to me at that assembly!”​

--This is my first try at writing a story, please tell me if its any good and if I should even bother on continueing.--
 

darkisaac

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A few tips:

-- Put spaces between paragraphs, divide things neatly, and begin a new paragraph whenever a new character speaks. Remember, you can have the best story in the world, but if it's not aesthetically pleasing many people will skip it; nobody likes having to struggle with a massive wall of text. (See other people's work for examples of the formatting I'm talking about.)

--Come up with a better name than Xander. I don't know what it is, but people writing their first stories always want to give their main character some exotic, 'cool' sounding name. This is fine, if everyone else in your story also has weird names; however, when you go from one character named 'Xander' to one named 'Max' and 'Jessica' it creates disparity. Your story loses a bit of credibility and makes it kinda cliched; I mean, you expect me to believe his Mom named one of her kids Xander and then gave the others normal names? Was she high when she gave birth to him?

I know it's tempting to come up with an outlandish name for your protagonist, but sometimes it's not really necessary.

--Try to do more showing than telling, for example, there's no need to tell us the age of the characters right off the bat, instead you can hint at it by describing other things, like mentioning he's a senior, which will automatically let the audience know he's either seventeen or eighteen. Also, just try to be a bit more descriptive, it always helps to describe the environment and setting. Use adjectives to convey emotion too, for example, it's obvious that Xander is in a sour mood, so add some adjectives and adverbs to indicate so when he speaks or acts. Also try to make your sentences as smooth as possible, don't use too many 'ands'.

Here's an example of how you can improve your sentences with the above tips. I will highlight things you can fix in the first quote and in the second one I wil highligh the things I added in order to improve the flow of the sentence. Also, there's no such thing as 'shaking your head yes', the word for the motion one makes when saying yes is called 'nodding'.

Instead of:
A girl got on the bus and sat down next to him and leaned up against him “Hey baby, something wrong?” He just shook his head “Don’t worry, it’s the last day of school, we haven’t spent any time together, but we are gonna during summer right?” He just shook his head yes.

You can write:
A girl got on the bus, sat down next to him, and leaned up against him.

“Hey baby, something wrong?”, she asked. Xander just nodded nonchalantly, barely listening.

“Don’t worry, it’s the last day of school, we haven’t spent any time together, but we are gonna during summer right?”

Again, Xander nooded with an aloof demeanor, not even making eye contact.

Notice how I divided the lines, starting a new paragraph each time the character spoke. Also notice the extra details I added about how your character nods his head, and the commas I used in the first sentence to eliminate the cumbersome 'ands' you had.

Anyways these are just a couple of simple tips that can greatly improve your writing. I wish you the best, and I hope you continue writing.

~Darkisaac
 

haseo47

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Ya, thanks. I only chose the names cuz I like em, not cuz i needed it to sound "cool".

....anyways...I guess thanks for the tips.
 

haseo47

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Well, I'm not gonna bother sayin if no one really cares.
It doesn't really matter if its left aligned or not, I just wanted it centered...is it "wrong" to do that? No
 

Annoyance

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Well, I'm not gonna bother sayin if no one really cares.
It doesn't really matter if its left aligned or not, I just wanted it centered...is it "wrong" to do that? No
You do that for maybe poetry or things like that.

Not stories. It's a standard format. It isn't you being different, it's just annoying for the reader to go through.

Hell, it's annoying when people do that for poetry most of the time, too.

One of my main issues is that this is really slow. I have absolutely no idea why I should read the next chapter because honestly, this barely foreshadows anything that is happening later. This might be because it's so short but I'm not sure on that. If you don't have a tiny inch of what your plot is going to be, it probably will not end up good.

- Make it longer.
- Just fix the format. Please. Having space between paragraphs on here also makes it easier to read for people.
- Work on your dialogue a bit. It doesn't seem real enough to me.
- Have an outline of your story so you have an idea of where you should go with things. It doesn't have to be fancy. Just some bullet points with big points in the story do just fine.
 

Annoyance

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--Come up with a better name than Xander. I don't know what it is, but people writing their first stories always want to give their main character some exotic, 'cool' sounding name. This is fine, if everyone else in your story also has weird names; however, when you go from one character named 'Xander' to one named 'Max' and 'Jessica' it creates disparity. Your story loses a bit of credibility and makes it kinda cliched; I mean, you expect me to believe his Mom named one of her kids Xander and then gave the others normal names? Was she high when she gave birth to him?
Xander is short for Alexander so it isn't that outlandish.
 

Zero Sora

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I mean, you expect me to believe his Mom named one of her kids Xander and then gave the others normal names? Was she high when she gave birth to him?
Xander is short for Alexander, same as Alex.

Other then what everyone else as said, I really have nothing to add. Some of the talking did seem unnatural, almost forced. Like you had them say something just for the sake of saying something. Also, a title for the story would be nice, and a chapter title as well. You can always tell how much people have thought out their stories by whether or not they have a title. This chapter of yours seems to be more of a prologue than an actual chapter. Basically, because it's short, and doesn't seem to show any direction that the story is taking, let alone what the story is about.

Fix the format of the story, no centering, spacing between paragraphs and dialogue. Length could be longer, but this is KHI, so chatpers too long might lose the readers interest. Don't make your chapters as long as mine. I simply can't help but tell long stories. If I could, I'd shorten my stories.
 

haseo47

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Well, I guess I'll try and fix it....plus i don't really have much experience in writing stories.

This might as well just be closed...and IF i even bother to finish it, then I MIGHT post it on here...
 

Annoyance

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Well, I guess I'll try and fix it....plus i don't really have much experience in writing stories.

This might as well just be closed...and IF i even bother to finish it, then I MIGHT post it on here...
Oi.

Stop that.


You tried, we told you what was wrong. This is what you asked for.
You fix it and move on.
It wasn't utterly terrible.

Don't give us none of this "well i tried... i guess im not good..." bullshit. Come the fuck on and work on it. It's what an artist does.

You practice writing before you become great, you know. Authors out there write and write and write before they come up with something good.
 

haseo47

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Holy shit >.<, you think i didn't know that it takes more than just one try to become good. I'm not fucking retarded you know.
I AM gonna work on it, what the fuck is YOUR problem huh?
I've tried and tried and I still am, I'm not tryin to give you any shit at all.

(I'm not trying to sound like an ass either, I've just been having a bad week.)
 
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